Other People
by ravenshell
Summary: Set after "The Power Inside Her". April speaks with various friends and allies about Donatello and the emotional repercussions of having disintegrated him. Hurt/comfort?
1. The One She Broke

Other People  
Chapter 1 – The One She Broke

It was the first time she noticed he wasn't next to her.

She'd been waiting for Donatello to come sit beside her, watch the movie, point out the scientific inaccuracies, pick apart the plot, all while giving her that bashful grin…

…and he didn't.

He sat cross-legged on the floor well behind the pit, pecking away at his laptop on some project or other. Normally, he would simply continue to work on whatever it was in the presence of his brothers, next to her.

She just wanted to check on him, especially after…

"Don? You okay?"

It was only there for a second, but she felt it from him, clear as day. He flinched when she spoke, a bolt of fear running up his spine.

"Oh, yes… I'm fine…" he said, pulling on a facade she could see right through. "I just… need some more concentration for this. I'll be in my lab."

He rose and left faster than the casualness he was trying to portray allowed, failing to meet her searching eyes.

x-x-x-x-x

He'd stopped seeking her out, she noticed as the weeks rolled by. He'd become distant, disengaged. More often than not, he found some reason to cower in his lab, or be—pretend to be—working on a project that was too dangerous for her to be nearby. She nearly bumped into him once, coming around a blind corner in the sewers on her way to the lair. "Don!" she'd shouted, partly out of joy and partly out of shock and trying not to crash into him with an armload of groceries. She saw him so infrequently, and was so happy to see him. Clearly, though, the feeling was not mutual, as the genius's aura shot with intense anxiety and he backpedaled from her.

Her incredulous look demanded some explanation. "P-Pavlovian response… heh… Nothing to worry about. It'll extinctify… eventually…"

She frowned at him. "I know who Pavlov is, Don. We need to talk."

He nodded, taking two of the bags from her as they walked. "You're right, we do."

But neither of them knew where to start for several long moments. They simply continued walking until they reached the lair, where Don took the rest of the food from her. "Well… I'm glad we had this talk! Now, if you'll excuse me…" he stated pertly and made to scarper off to his lab.

"Donnie!" she snapped at him and felt that chill run through him again through her empathic link, then dread as he turned back around. And fright. "I never figured you for a coward," she said tartly.

"I'm sorry, April… I just… I can't."

"Come on, Don. Talk to me," she coaxed. "You said you were fine. You're not fine."

"I was at the time… I could just brush it off. But the more I think about it… the more nightmares…" He shook his head. "I know it's irrational, that Zan'ramon's power is out of you now, but I can't help feeling like…"

"…like I'll do it again," she finished for him. He winced, and she knew she was correct. "I'm so sorry, Donnie. I promise, I'll never—"

"But you did," he cut her off in a sad whisper. "Despite all my pleading to let me take the crystal… You let her take you over, and when my life was hanging in the balance, seventy-four feet in the air, you wouldn't even fight for me. You let her tear me molecule from molecule," he said so low she could barely hear. "Nerve from nerve. And it HURT, April… a brief agony before nothingness, but that… that was the most pain I've experienced in my life… before she scattered me across the city…"

Tears rimmed her eyes. "I put it back…. I put it all back, I put you back together!"

He stared at the floor. "Not all of it."

April's heart flew into her throat. "What? What did I miss?!" she gawped. "Tell me, maybe I can still fix it!"

The lanky turtle shook his head. "You can't fix this. You can't fix broken trust. You can't put the faith you had in someone back the way it was."

She felt her heart fall into the pit of her stomach and sit there like a leaden lump. "Donnie…" she tried, but a word beyond 'sorry' that expressed the regret and heartache she felt didn't come to her, and she stood there gawping, still searching for one.

"I can't be around you right now, April. I can't keep living with this, can't work with it hanging over my head. So I keep thinking… maybe…" His eye caught hers for a bare second. "…maybe we should see other people." He glanced away again with a faked laugh. "Well… prospects are pretty slim for me… you should see other people."

Shock nailed her to the floor, and the dejection she felt flowing off him in waves pierced straight through her. She knew all he'd gone through to get her attention, to get her to see past the mutant exterior. He'd been clumsy and awkward and had a few missteps, but she'd come around, encouraged his advances. His discovery that she was a mutant gave them something closely in common, and brought her hope that maybe this was the right path for them. Their relationship developed from a tiny bud to a nearly open bloom…

And then she'd snapped it off at the stem and trampled it. For her to hurt him so deeply that that pipe dream was now cast to the wind… it broke her heart, utterly. Tears streamed down her cheeks unchecked, and her voice was unsteady when she tried to speak again. "Donnie… I…"

Don's posture slumped so low he was nearly shorter than her, the emotions killing him as well. "I hope you find someone that suits you." He flexed his fists as if steeling his resolve, then took a breath and marched stalwartly into his lab without so much as a backward glance at her.

She tried to say something to stop him, but all that came out was an ugly croak, and when the lab door closed behind him, she turned and bolted from the lair, blinded by her tears. None of his brothers tried to stop her, meaning either they were just as shocked as she, or they'd already known this had been coming down the pike. Either way, she was left alone in her heartbreak, and for that, she was grateful. If she was going to ugly cry, no one needed to see it.


	2. The One Who Witnessed

Chapter 2 – The One Who Witnessed

Casey handed her one of the two blue raspberry slushes he held in his hands and plunked himself unceremoniously beside her on the bench. "So what's with the face, Red? You're looking bluer than this stuff," he angled, taking a long pull from his own drink.

April shot him a stricken look, about to cry at any moment, but she felt it from him as well… that same tendril of fear gripping him if she turned her eye on him too fast or looked at him too harshly. She couldn't blame him. Or any of them, for that matter. "Donnie… broke up with me," she told him, then quickly clarified, so he wouldn't get any ideas, "After I blew him up, he's… scared of me."

She expected the boy to jump at the chance to make a pass at her, to extol his virtues over his mutant rival, but he only let out a long sigh and replied, "Yeah." April tried to look him in the eye, but, like Don, he kept avoiding her direct gaze. "Don't get me wrong… Watchin' you kick the Foot mutants' butt was awesome…" he said with a grin, but it quickly subsided. "But…seein' you blast Donnie to space dust was…intense."

"Donnie's mad because I didn't fight her hard enough. Za'noran was just so powerful… I couldn't hardly move outside of her grip on me. Don wanted me to fight when my whole body was being jerked around like a puppet!"

"And you shouldda."

April jerked back a bit, stunned at this declaration. "How?!"

"Any way you could. Tooth and nail. Get pissed. Throw her off her game, and once she's off-balance, keep hittin' her, hard as you could. Take back what's yours, 'cause otherwise…" He stopped to take a long slurp of his drink, until the straw rattled with the lack of liquid, then he popped the lid off and dumped the remaining ice on the sidewalk in front of him. He kicked out with one oversized teenage foot, scattering the little ice chips across the pavement, where they melted into a thousand little wet circles in the autumn sun. "…she dusts everything you love."

They sat silently as the tiny circles shrank and faded to nothing.

"You think… I mean… She… was goin' after Raph next. But after that… would itta been me you poofed, ya think?" April stared wordlessly back at him, aghast. "Or would I have even made a blip on her radar? Just some kid raging against the machine with a hockey stick… We were nothing but bugs to her." He thumped his heel on the concrete to knock some remaining slush from it. "Is that all we are, Red? Ants, for some cosmic power bigger and stronger'n us to come wipe us out with a giant magnifying glass?"

She stared numbly. "I hope not." Seeking comfort, she turned, leaning her face against his arm. She was startled when a moment later, she was grasped gently by the shoulders and pushed away. "Casey?"

He loosed his grip, but wouldn't meet her gaze. "Look… with all that's happened, I don't wanna be your fallout guy…"

Her brow wrinkled. "You mean my fallback guy, right?"

His shoulders lifted lazily. "That too. Point is, Donnie was your favoritest thing in the world, and you, like, atomized him right in front of us." That little ribbon of fear curled itself around him again, but this time, it was also doused in melancholy. "And… if he wasn't worth enough to you to fight for," he paused, shooting her a sad but charming grin, "…what kind of chances have I got?"

"Casey, no…" April tried to explain, but he simply rose and jammed his hands in his pockets, stalking off.

"I'll see ya around, Red."

x-x-x-x-x

a/n: Sorry for getting Za'noran's name and the episode title wrong in the previous chapter! Too many villains with Z names...


	3. The One Who Raised Her

It was hard for him to not notice her picking at her food. "April? Something wrong?" Kirby asked.

"No," she said miserably in an obvious lie and continued moving peas from one side of her plate to the other.

"Problems at school?"

"No," she repeated.

"No, you wouldn't be so upset about a low mark… " he reasoned. "Boy trouble?"

She ignored him, stabbing at her Salisbury steak, though she sighed distractedly. Kirby didn't press. He knew she'd open up in a moment or two.

"Donnie… broke up with me… He says he can't be around me right now…" she said slowly, holding back tears as best as she could. "And Casey doesn't want to get involved… After I blew Donnie up… they're both scared of me."

"Oh," he managed, trying to keep it as neutral as possible, though he knew the dread she undoubtedly felt. Since the incident, there had been a malaise of guilt floating about her. The best he could do for her was to act normal, calm.

Their world had gotten incredibly complicated over the last year, involving mutants, ninja, aliens, and himself being turned into a bat for a time. Kirby was a cautious man—one had to be in New York City—but he never would have expected the heroic creatures his daughter had befriended, never expected to be mutated simply by stepping outside with her one night, never expected the revelation that she was a mutant herself. That was the one that hit home the most; it was disturbing and shocking to learn sixteen years after their daughter's birth and ten after his wife's disappearance that she'd had prior dealings with the Kraang.

It had come as a shock to all of them when April presented signs of psychic ability and, when dropped into a vat of the mutagenic glop, no mutation affected her. Donatello, upon looking into the matter, discovered her Kraang mutation, and the only explanation—now quite evident to Kirby—was the DNA passed down from her mother.

At the root, Kirby knew his wife's disappearance had been an abduction… it made sense that the Kraang would want one of their experiments back, especially if they wanted Renee as a power source as much as they had wanted April. But there was a part of him that resented her leaving him to raise their daughter alone, never providing so much as a clue about things that could affect April, leaving April with questions that Kirby had no answers for. Leaving her to discover her telepathic abilities with no explanation for their source or extent or how to manage them. Leaving her unprepared for an invasion via addiction and the eventual, albeit thankfully temporary, destruction of her closest friend. At some level, he was absolutely livid with his wife for deserting them and leaving April to figure everything out on her own, and the wounds inflicted upon his daughter and, he was sure, all of her friends.

With a sigh, Kirby rotated his own pile of peas around. "Communication is always best—" he started, only to have April cut him off.

"I tried! Donnie's traumatized over it, and Casey thinks he's a bug."

"He thinks he's a bug?"

"Not literally. Like he doesn't matter to me. He said if I poofed Donnie even though I loved him, where did that put him in the scheme of things?" She moved a bit of meat around on her plate, then set her fork down completely, unable to stomach a meal while her mind remained so distraught. "And they're right. If I hadn't been able to force out Za'noran, I could've killed all of them. Then you, and everyone in New York…" Her breathing increased as a wave of panic overtook her. "If I hadn't been able to put Donnie's atoms back together—!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa now… Stop," he said, grasping her hand. "There's no use feeling guilt over events that didn't happen. And for what did happen… if they're truly your friends, they'll understand and forgive you."

She stared at the floor. "Didn't seem like it." Her father gave her hand a pat.

"Give it time. They both need a while to process things and heal. And, it's possible that neither of them feels that they can do that healing in the same environs that they were wounded in."

"Around me," she understood that to mean, and Kirby nodded in confirmation. She blew out a long huff of frustrated acceptance and pulled her hand from him. "Guess I'm going it solo for a while…"

x-x-x-x-x

To those who have asked, yes, I am continuing this! This chapter just had me at a loss, and I ended up somewhere off in the weeds for a while.

Headcanon: I'm naming April's mom Renee, after Renae Jacobs, voice actor of the original April O'Neil, and the Mom-thing in the 2012 series. ;p I ended up cutting a lot of Renee and Kirby's history from this chapter, which maybe I'll put somewhere else. This fic isn't about her.


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